Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to enhanced transceivers (e.g., Small Form-factor Pluggable (SFP) optical transceivers), or enhanced universal interfaces for transceivers, for deployment in a subscriber's network that provide Internet Protocol functionality (e.g., using Layer 3 protocols such as IPv4, IPv6, ICMP, ICMPv6) for network layer (Layer 3) testing and not just physical layer (Layer 1) testing or data link layer (Layer 2) testing. The present invention also relates generally to apparatuses and methods for providing universal interfaces between transceivers (e.g., SFP optical transceivers and other types of optical and electrical transceivers) and network equipment having additional transceiver functionality.